From owner-freebsd-platforms Mon Mar 17 23:00:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA08812 for platforms-outgoing; Mon, 17 Mar 1997 23:00:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from werple.net.au (melb.werple.net.au [203.9.190.18]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id XAA08806 for ; Mon, 17 Mar 1997 23:00:03 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 9377 invoked by uid 5); 18 Mar 1997 06:53:21 -0000 Received: (from jb@localhost) by freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au (8.7.5/8.7.3) id RAA04682; Tue, 18 Mar 1997 17:38:53 +1100 (EST) From: John Birrell Message-Id: <199703180638.RAA04682@freebsd1.cimlogic.com.au> Subject: Re: To share or not share ? (was: Someone working on a SPARC version?) To: pgiffuni@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co (Pedro Giffuni) Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 17:38:52 +1100 (EST) Cc: freebsd-platforms@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <332E4DC0.6455@fps.biblos.unal.edu.co> from Pedro Giffuni at "Mar 18, 97 00:09:36 am" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-platforms@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Pedro Giffuni wrote: > Of course, it would be very stupid from myself not to admit that we need > to modify our tree following the NetBSD example (BTW, IMO, the best time > to do it is ASAP, can someone illustrate me on what are the clear > objectives behing 3.0-current ?). But we should protect our evolved code > (LKMs and devices) from being swapped because another OS has a prettier > structure than ours. I think it is unrealistic to hold out hope that the kernel designs will ever be compatible enough to share code "easily" --- without hacking. With the exception of device drivers, I don't care about that 8-). The practical thing to do is to use the system that is already available for the architecture(s) you want to use. I use FreeBSD for i386 and NetBSD for Alpha. For me, though, the big win would be sharing libraries and their header files because this reduces the amount of code my company has to support. From libraries and header files, the ports tree naturally follows. When (if) I get time I'll try building NetBSD's libc on FreeBSD and try building ports against that. That should give me some idea of how incompatible the interfaces between userlands and the kernels are. Regards, -- John Birrell - jb@cimlogic.com.au; jb@netbsd.org CIMlogic Pty Ltd, 119 Cecil Street, South Melbourne Vic 3205, Australia Tel +61 3 9690 6900 Fax +61 3 9690 6650 Mob +61 418 353 137